I will be blogging on specific Summit sessions such as this one, but information on some of the other keynotes and events can be found here.

How PPM professionals need to embrace the digital

I really liked Jonathan MacDonald’s vibrant entrance on stage. Founder of the Thought Expansion Network, he delivered his talk with immense energy and the music captured the audience’s attention and thoughts immediately. He was able to relay that PPM professionals need to embrace the digital changes and how we think and react will determine our future. He stated that ‘Success is response dependent, not size dependent’ ¹

Jonathan provided examples of wireless in households, message apps and the e-commerce sales making huge shifts in growth, changing how we do business. We must all accept the changes as change agents, otherwise we will fail.

Jonathan worked on an analogy of a big oil tanker and a speed boat both needing to be fuelled, navigated and translated. In my opinion, we need to take responsibility and manage the relationships involving how senior stakeholders handle certainty versus uncertainty. The term ‘fuelled’ was used in the analogy. I think that regardless of the size of the business, they still need to continue to exist and be ‘navigated’, that is providing leadership and direction to the workforce whilst taking risks. Finally, the term ‘translated’ was used, and in my view, this could be ways of communication so that the ‘oil tanker or boat’ does not crash or stray. Typically, in business the same would be keeping the stakeholders informed and providing them with choices.

Jonathan is an extremely effective speaker who ended his talk with a statement about ‘Risk Of Inaction’ ².

In my view, this had two meanings: a) we must do something as not doing anything is no longer an option and b) the initial caps of each word forms ROI which means, Return On Investment, therefore activity in business is important for gain profits.

Full details on the presentation contents or how to contact the analysts can be obtained from Gartner, Incdirectly.

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